In August, UNHCR published a brief focusing on the role of municipalities in refugee integration across Europe. It highlights that municipalities across Europe are increasingly hosting refugees (about one-third of all refugees globally in 2023). The document brings together fresh insights and workable solutions on areas of pressing concern to municipal actors, such as:

• funding
• affordable housing
• multi-stakeholder coordination on holistic integration responses and policies
• effective population distribution
• boosting the attractiveness of declining municipalities
• enhancing data on integration and inclusion

While municipalities remain at the forefront of the refugee response, the brief outlines the essential role stakeholders across multiple sectors must play – as enablers, investors, and innovators – in enhancing refugee access to rights and opportunities and maximising their potential to contribute to the future prosperity of towns and cities of Europe. 

The publication features:

• recommendations, practical advice, and a synthesis of expert knowledge and policy advice, based on long-term regional-level analysis and the daily work of UNHCR operations with governments, local businesses, other frontline local actors, and forcibly displaced and stateless people.
• a section on housing solutions, including a repository of scalable models/practices, and a selection of recent key research and guidance on fair and affordable housing for refugees and host populations alike.  
• insights and recommendations on topics high on the agenda of municipal authorities and their key interlocutors across levels of government and society: access to funding for refugee inclusion and integration and inclusive urban development, boosting the refugee-integration potential of smaller and medium-sized cities, and many more.
• essential guidance on integration policy and practice, informed by over a decade of UNHCR’s strategic engagement on refugee integration in Europe, including following peak 2015 - 2016 arrivals, across subsequent ongoing refugee arrivals into Europe, and now with the process of socio-economic inclusion of refugees from Ukraine.
• New promising practices on refugee inclusion and integration from Poland, Bulgaria, Italy, Cyprus, Moldova, Lithuania, Finland, Slovakia, and Romania. 

Interspersed throughout the brief are useful links to manuals, handbooks, and methodologies developed in collaboration with refugees, city administrators, integration practitioners, and local service providers. These bring energy, innovation, hands-on expertise, and a participatory and inclusive approach to the design of solutions.